


All I know

by destinae



Series: Winter Wonderland [2]
Category: American Revolution RPF, Historical RPF
Genre: I'm Sorry, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-15
Updated: 2016-12-15
Packaged: 2018-09-08 16:06:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 949
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8851318
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/destinae/pseuds/destinae
Summary: It was a warm summer day, and George Washington was dying.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glassbones](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glassbones/gifts).



It was a warm summer morning, and George Washington was dying.

He lay in his bed, surrounded by his remaining friends. The man was so old that he could almost feel every organ in his body failing. The man stood at death’s formidable doorstep, heart rate creeping along at a snail’s pace, and he felt nothing. George had found a strange emotional equilibrium with the notion of death. He had already far outlived his own life expectation. A combination of poor physical and mental health had driven him into decades of decline that should have, at any given point in their transpiration, driven him to death.

And yet they hadn't. Time and time again, George had survived in spite of himself. Everyone around him seemed concern. Alexander, Eliza, and Thomas stood gathered around his bed, hands on the sheets. He could see it giving way beneath their hands, but they seemed a thousand miles away. His existence suddenly felt very pedantic. What had George done in his many decades of life? He’d bet on horses and fallen out of love. As a familiar pain blossomed in his side, his eyes looked beyond the ceiling.

So this was dying. This was how it ended. George was alone in a room full of people, his body giving way beneath the weight of his heavy spirit, and he realized very suddenly how little he had lived. He had shut himself in from the cold too much. He’d wasted his time getting the same drink every time he went to the café. He’d gone to the races when he should have gone on adventures. George found, as his lungs began to shudder, that his routine life, while it had been enjoyable in practice, had been nothing but a waste in hindsight.

Dread weighed on his heaving chest. He had wasted his chance at love. And not just in the immediate physical sense, but in the grand sense. George’s jaded enjoyment of the regular had made him lose out on classical romantic pleasures. He had never drank enough, or eaten enough. He hadn’t smiled when he should have. He’d stifled laughs when he should have let himself double over in amusement. George had lived a muffled existence because he had been afraid of joy.

Afraid of joy. Of himself. Of the boy he’d lost because he’d dared bring some of that life back in.

Of Gilbert.

God, the pain of realization ran George through. It hurt more than his hands, whose bones had long since grown brittle and still. He was alone, and he was sad, and his damn penchant for sticking to habit had made him miss out on the one person who could ever love or improve him. George Washington was dying a deeply flawed and miserable man, whose self-denial had driven him to a lifetime of monotony.

It was just what George would expect of Gilbert, to come sneaking back after years without communication or second thought, and be his dying thoughts. As they hadn’t spoken in so long, George could only remember Gilbert in his prime: when he was young, and his hair was still untamed and his smile stretched into forever. George remembered the way that Gilbert had insisted on loving him, that despite the years that stood between them and the distance George insisted he felt, Gilbert had wanted him. He remembered the days they’d spent together, those stolen hours where everything had been liminal. Gilbert had brought about the extraordinary in George’s life. He’d burst into the middle of the constancy of misery and demanded there be light in his jaded heart, and George had felt warmth.

But his body was very cold. He wondered if Gilbert still thought of him. Undoubtedly, he had found some job as an ambassador. Gilbert had the capacity to be one of the greats, and George had never told him. There was so much he hadn’t told Gilbert throughout the years, or even in those moments where the right word would have brought them ever closer together-- regret soaked the bones of the dying man.

He drew a breath, and with shaking voice, asked Alexander to take down a letter.

“Alexander, write this for me.” He said, “And-- and send it to Gilbert.”

“Gilbert?”

“Lafayette.”

Alexander looked at some of the others present, then picked up a journal from George’s bedside. George fell into a fit of coughs, entire body shaking as he clung to life with chipped and dry nails. “Write this: Dearest Gilbert. I am sorry.” He paused, another wave of chills washing over his body. “I-- was afraid.” George continued. “And I could never tell you…”

His voice fell away as he struggled for air. Heaving lungs protested the catharsis that his withering heart could barely handle. “... I could never tell you, Gilbert, how grateful I am for what time we had together.” He continued, voice nearing a whisper. Life growing shorter. Death wrapping its cold fingers around his ankles. “Do great things, Gilbert. And tell me about them. I miss our adventures.” The words came out hoarse and broken, frayed by the breaking threads of his ending life.

So this was death. George took one more rattling breath, and felt the cold of a decades-gone winter come over him. As his soul left his body, he heard the laugh of a man he once knew, and knew that he had gone to the right place.

Two weeks later, the letter arrived in France, deposited at the desk of the French ambassador to the United States. It was picked up, the address read by the man that occupied the office, and was never opened.

Gilbert was already dead.

**Author's Note:**

> Irina made me do it.
> 
> LOOK i know Washington died in the winter but I had to make it during the summer for poetic juxtaposition please don't put me on blast


End file.
